


say it now

by braveatheart



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, i will accept nothing less than a tearful apology scene, it is law
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 13:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14874797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braveatheart/pseuds/braveatheart
Summary: Kara's guilt is eating her alive. She has to work things out with Lena. She has to.Loosely inspired by the song "Say It Now" by The Afters. I hope you enjoy!





	say it now

**Author's Note:**

> Long time no write! I put this together in just about an hour, so it's nowhere near perfect, but it was an idea I've been wanting to write for a while since I rediscovered the song that this is based on. Regardless of the draftiness of it, I hope you enjoy!

_ I can’t do this. I can’t do this. _

Kara paces her apartment, hands trembling and thoughts racing. She’s dressed in her full Supergirl suit, her hair flowing effortlessly over her shoulders. Though she can leap from a building and land steadily on her feet, every step she takes now feels uncertain and off-balance. 

“You’re being ridiculous,” she mutters to herself. She shakes her head and pinches the bridge of her nose as she flops onto her couch in defeat. Her cape wraps around her as if to comfort her, and she almost wants to laugh. Instead, she lets out an exasperated sigh and closes her eyes.

She can take infinite bullets to her bare skin and walk away without a scratch. She can take down a rogue alien with one hand. Hell, she can convince a robber to hand over his gun without any powers at all.

Despite all of this, she still can’t quite find the courage to talk to just one woman. 

“Okay,” she begins, pulling herself up off of the couch with a huff. She straightens out her skirt and stands taller, willing herself to be confident. “Just… just go. You just gotta do it.”

Without allowing her doubt to creep back in, Kara soars out her open balcony window toward a certain penthouse. She focuses only on the sound of the heartbeat she’s using to lead her.

A moment later, she lands on the sleek concrete balcony of said penthouse. The heartbeat she’s listening to beats faster for a moment as the inhabitant is startled by the sudden sound. Kara hears shuffling and a few choice words as the woman makes her way to the balcony doors. The woman opens the blinds, clad only in an MIT sweatshirt and fitting black sweatpants, and freezes in her tracks when she sees who waits outside. Her jaw clenches in apparent anger or annoyance, and Kara swallows hard. Her surge of forced begins to dissipate as the anxiety settles in once more. Her hand shakes as she reaches up to offer a weak wave.

The glass door is slid open in silence, and Kara takes that as her cue to enter the penthouse. The two women walk over to the nearby living room where they sit opposite each other. Kara averts her eyes by tracing the lines of the wooden floor beneath them, but she can feel emerald orbs boring holes into her skull.

“It’s 12:30 in the morning on a weeknight,” Lena states, her voice cold and void of emotion. “I have work at eight tomorrow morning and I intend on sleeping before the sun rises.”

“I know,” Kara replies, her voice hushed and uncertain. “You should really be asleep already. You don’t rest enough.”

“All the more reason for you to come out with why you’re here.”

Kara gulps hard and feels her heartbeat stutter. Her body feels weak suddenly as her anxiety rises further, and all at once her mouth goes dry. She can’t bear to look up at Lena yet. The last time she looked into Lena’s angry and betrayed eyes, her heart nearly shattered. She isn’t sure she’ll survive that same loveless glare another time, so she keeps her eyes trained on the floor instead.

“I um…” she begins, her voice coming out raspy and tremulous. She clears her throat before continuing and takes a deep breath.

“Can we please work things out?”

Lena is silent. She doesn’t move a muscle. The only sounds in the room are that of their heartbeats and slow breathing. Kara wonders for a moment if her offer is going to be rejected, and suddenly words are tumbling out of her mouth.

“I know it’s partially my fault that we haven’t. I keep holding onto this anger, and it’s holding us back from a chance to move on. We just.. We did a lot of fighting and not a lot of talking things out and I really don’t want to lose what we had so can we please just talk?”

Kara looks up now finally, and she almost wishes she hadn’t. Lena stares back at her with that same glare she dreaded. Her jaw is clenched tighter now, so much so that Kara figures it must hurt at least a little bit. She’s pulled her legs up onto the white leather chair she’s seated in, almost as if she’s guarding herself. Kara’s eyes begin to burn as tears threaten to well. She blinks the sensation away, knowing that she needs to keep her composure if there’s any hope for them to have a civil and productive conversation. Still, the sight before her breaks her heart all over again. 

After a few more seconds of Kara’s silent pleading, Lena relents. She lets out a breath that Kara didn’t notice she’d been holding and nods curtly. Her eyes flit down to the ground as she gathers herself, then back up to Kara’s.

“Okay. We can try.”

Kara breathes a sigh of relief and collapses forward, supporting her head in her hands as her elbows rest on her knees. She closes her eyes and takes a few deep breaths to steady herself. She’s almost ready to look back up when Lena speaks.

“Just… would you take off the damn outfit? If we’re going to talk this out, we’re going to be equals, and wearing that suit just adds to the whole god complex you’ve got going on. I’m not interested in being looked at as if I’m beneath you.”

The words twist like a knife in Kara’s chest as the reality of how Lena sees Supergirl sets in, but she nods. Lena has a point, and she’ll do just about anything to make this work. She mutters an “I’ll be back” and speeds home to grab some comfortable clothes. When she gets back, Lena points toward the hallway, presumably where the bathroom is. In ten seconds total, the suit is back in Kara’s apartment and Kara is clad in blue plaid pajama pants and her favorite Wizard of Oz t-shirt. 

Lena scoffs as she sees Supergirl, stripped of all her glory, sitting on her couch across from her. 

“Who would’ve thought that Supergirl is actually a person?”

Kara sighs and says nothing, opting instead to avert her eyes to the wooden floor again. Each of Lena’s angry words cut into her, but she retort. The only thing she wants is peace and love between them again, and the only way that’s going to happen is if she stays calm and collected.

“I’m here to listen, truly listen, to anything you want to say to me,” Kara offers, willing herself to look back up. She pulls her legs onto the couch and leans against the armrest. Lena chuckles humorlessly and raises an eyebrow.

“Are you sure you want that?” she asks. Kara swallows hard and nods. She can take it.

“You shamed me for attempting to help a friend before sending her to you, because I knew that whoever you worked for would treat her like a Worldkiller, not Sam. Sam is still in there, and I know it. I didn’t want to subject her to being treated like a criminal when I knew one of my best friends was still in there somewhere. Yet you treated me as if I were a criminal.”

Kara worries her bottom lip and wills the lump in her throat to disappear, but it seems to be ignoring her wishes. She nods to show that she’s listening and encourages Lena to go on.

“Then when you found out that I was using Kryptonite to keep Reign contained, you acted as if it were a personal attack against you. Had I not had that Kryptonite, I could have been dead. Sam could have been dead. Hell, your family here could have been dead. Your cousin could have been dead. But all you cared about was how it affected you.”

“I know… I know, I was selfish, Lena,” Kara begins. She searches for something else to say as she tries to make sense of the thoughts racing through her mind, but she comes up empty. Instead, she closes her mouth and beckons for Lena to continue.

Lena shifts her jaw slightly and takes a breath, then goes on.

“You asked my boyfriend to go behind my back and search my lab. You, the only Super who has ever given me the benefit of the doubt, pulled the ‘Luthor’ card on me. That’s… that’s low. That’s really low.”

Tears begin to well in Kara’s eyes against her will, and she glances down in an attempt to hide them. She shifts in her spot and pulls her legs closer to her body, resting her head between her knees. Still, she maintains eye contact with Lena. The raven haired woman’s cheeks and nose are tinted rose, and her own eyes are glossy. Guilt eats at Kara’s chest as she realizes how deeply she cut with that one word. 

“I just… you don’t even seem sorry. You seem so set in your ways that you can’t even look through someone else’s eyes. I think that’s what hurts the most… you don’t even seem sorry.”

Lena’s voice wavers on her last sentence, and she bites her bottom lip. Her eyebrows turn upward as her eyes begin to water, shifting to a deeper shade of green. Kara wants nothing more than to invite her onto the couch and pull her into a tight embrace, but she can’t. She can’t do that, because she is the reason for Lena’s pain.

“I messed up,” Kara says meekly, her voice strained from the lump in her throat. “I… I felt betrayed, so I… no, that doesn’t matter.”

Kara sighs in frustration and pinches the bridge of her nose again.  _ Great job. Your apology was just you defending yourself again. _

Lena remains silent and expecting as Kara regathers herself.

“In my own fear, I became selfish and completely ignorant to your side of all of this,” Kara admits. She feels her throat tighten further yet, but she’s determined to say what she needs to say. “I didn’t think about anything other than myself, and I hate that I hurt you so much. Asking James to search your lab was just… that was out of line.”

“Using your last name against you was completely uncalled for. It was petty and thoughtless and I only did it to jab back at you when you called me out on my hypocrisy. It was really, really low. You’re right.”

Kara’s voice cracks and the dam begins to break. The tears welling in her eyes slip down her cheeks, but she hurriedly wipes them away on the fabric of her pajama pants. She shouldn’t be the one crying. Still, her regret and her anger with herself are so strong that she can’t keep her emotions at bay. She takes a moment to breathe before looking back up at Lena.

If it were possible for Kara’s heart to shatter for a third time, it would have. For the first time that she’s ever witnessed, tears stream down Lena’s cheeks. There’s a wet spot on the back of her sweatshirt sleeve, and Kara realizes she’s probably been wiping tears away for the majority of the conversation when Kara wasn’t looking. The heroine bites her lip to stifle the sob that rises in her throat.

“I’m so sorry, Lena,” she whispers. “I can’t say it enough. I will do anything to prove it to you because I am just… I am so, so sorry. Ah, dammit…”

Kara trails off as more tears slip down her cheeks, and she pulls the collar of her t-shirt up to her eyes to dry them. While her face is hidden, she allows herself to break for a moment. Her face scrunches as a few more tears escape, and she stifles another sob or two as they hitch in her throat. Her body shakes, but she tries her best to regain her composure. She doesn’t have the right to cry when she hurt Lena so deeply.

After a few more moments of steadying herself, Kara finally pulls her shirt back down and faces Lena again. The CEO is wiping away a few tears of her own, and her knees are pulled closer to her chest. It kills Kara that they’re both clearly desperate for some form of physical comfort, but there’s so much distance between them that they can’t give it to each other when they need it. She prays to Rao that by the end of this conversation, the distance will be healed enough to hold each other close.

“I get it,” Lena says suddenly, her voice thick and wet. She sniffles and pushes a few stray hands of hair out of her face. “I get why you’re so afraid of Kryptonite.”

Kara says nothing and simply listens.

“I know you’ve been through hell in your life, and you’ve had to protect yourself and others. I also know that Kryptonite feels like the equivalent of acid being injected into your veins. If there was only one substance on Earth that could kill me and my best friend was the sole owner of it, I definitely wouldn’t feel completely okay with it either.”

Kara’s heart stops in her chest. 

“I get it, Kara, and I’m sorry that you’ve had to endure so much and that this substance is so frightening to you,” Lena says, but Kara can hardly hear her after the sound of her name. “I just… you’re my best friend. I thought you were the only person who would never look at me like I was evil. And you did.”

“Lena, I -”

“I’m not mad that you didn’t tell me,” Lena says, cutting Kara off. Kara stops talking and lets her lips close, despite the millions of things she wants to say. 

“I told James that I knew it was you. He explained everything. You didn’t tell me to protect me.”

Lena scoffs and shakes her head before continuing.

“I thought that was bullshit at first,” she admits, cracking a tiny smile. Kara offers a chuckle, but it quickly fades. “But I believe him now. I believe you now.”

Lena sighs and looks down, and Kara can see tears welling in the CEO’s eyes once again. The moment of lightness passes as guilt claws at the heroine’s chest with even more fervor than before.

“I just never thought… I thought you’d never look at me like I was evil. And then you did, and I don’t know what to feel now.”

Kara can’t take it anymore. The distance between them suddenly feels like miles, and it’s too much. She leaps off the couch and over to the chair that Lena sits in. She almost begins to pull Lena into a hug, but she stops herself. She isn’t sure that her best friend would be ready for the contact. Instead, she kneels down in front of her and hesitantly reaches for a pale hand. When her fingers clasp around Lena’s, she expects the CEO to jerk her hand away. 

She doesn’t evade the touch. Instead, she intertwines their fingers. She reaches up to wipe away more stray tears with her free hand. Kara’s face is soaked now, but she doesn’t bother to attempt to wipe it off. 

“I’m going to do whatever it takes to make this right, okay?” Kara promises. “Whatever you need, it’s yours.”

Lena swallows hard and nods, the corner of her mouth twitching upward into an attempted smile. She sniffles and takes a slow breath through her mouth, then looks upward as she lets it out. It doesn’t do much to stop the flow of tears, but it helps a bit. She grabs tighter to Kara’s hand.

“Just trust me and love me like you used to,” she requests. Her voice is small and childlike, almost as if she is afraid or embarrassed of the request.

“I do trust you, Lena,” Kara reassures, looking right into Lena’s eyes. Her blue orbs dart between Lena’s emeralds, searching for some sign that Lena believes her.

Another thought comes to mind, and she almost doesn’t say it. 

She almost doesn’t, but then she realizes that they can’t hold things back anymore, and neither of them have the strength to do so.

“I never stopped loving you, even if it seemed like I did,” she admits softly. “I promise I never stopped.”

Lena offers a small but genuine smile, the first of the night, and sniffles. 

“Me too,” she whispers. “Me too.”


End file.
